Link Ingests a Poe
by TrippyToastersAndABagOfChips
Summary: A song is sung throughout the ages by a choir of angels and guided by a conductor who stands atop a golden mountain and wielding a sword of fire that screams without end. And with the beckoning of these heavenly notes departs the warrior blessed by the three goddesses with the courage and power to save a kingdom oppressed by a dark knave who sits upon a throne seized with bloodshed


Link Ingests a Poe

Link glanced at the glass bottle in his hand, considering it not for the first time that night. He knew what was inside the bottle, and it was not a fairy or a potion.

The lightning in the sky sprang to life for the briefest of seconds, illuminating the battlefield below. The corpses scattered around Link were frozen in their death with expressions of horror across their features, their bodies deformed and bloodied and disgraced by the mud the rain had mercilessly poured from the heavens. There were many breeds of the slain. Stalfos, darknuts, moblins… Link's blade knew not the difference of species, nor did it care. It had brought death to more of them than the young hero could have possibly counted in the long hours they had danced their twisted dance of death. It was truly a massacre befitting a warrior so highly praised by both the great gods and humble people of the long-defiled kingdom known across time as Hyrule.

The epic battle had continued long into the night. The twisted and soulless false lord of darkness Ganondorf, who sat upon a throne wrongfully seized and adorned by a crown of thorns that bore no honor, had ordered an army unlike any other to annihilate the chosen hero of the gods who moved through time like the wind through a chasm between two mighty mountains and to return with their wicked crest held high and the bodiless head of the kingdom's only salvation held higher as they sang the shriek song of godless evil. But they had failed.

However, some consolation had come to the dark lord's evil plan. For the hero was beaten and pushed beyond what a mortal body could bear. And so he limped through the war-torn battlefield he had crafted as the rain fell mercilessly in great drops worthy of a poet's praise.

And he glanced back at the bottle in his hand. For what was inside was the twisted and broken soul of one of his enemy's many servants. And he knew that swallowing the contents of the bottle could either save him, or sever the hair that kept him from this world and the next. For while the goddesses would grant him mighty weapons enough to slay armies, they would not spare him from the lover's gentle caress of the reaper's hand.

His horse was gone, run back to the ranch she called home. And that was where Link found himself approaching agonizingly slowly. But from where he stood, Lon Lon Ranch was still a trip of several hours on healthy feet, much less the barely-living ones upon which he now limped. Link could not begrudge the panic that had seized poor Epona when the demonic army had first appeared on the horizon as the storm had first split the sky like a challenge from hell itself. Had be been more of a man, rather than the battle-hardened weapon of the gods that he was, he likely would have been stricken by a similar fear and fled as well. Common sense and safety, at the cost of honor. The path of a warrior was never an easy one, much less one of happiness or comfort.

Link glanced at the bottle in his hand once more, unwilling to let this maddening indecision continue any longer. The Poe would either finish him off right there, or give him the extra burst of life he needed to make it back to the ranch, where food, a warm bed, and smiling faces awaited him. And before he could change his mind, Link pulled the cork of the bottle and forced the evanescent spirit down his throat.

It had no taste or feel to him as he ingested it. It was both as cold as ice, and as hot as fire at the same time. He collapsed to his knees as the Poe made it's way down to his belly, before coming to rest in the very depths of the hero's soul and dissipating into ethereal nothingness.

With a smile, Link knew at once that he had been lucky. He could already feel the strength returning to his limbs. The hero of time rose proud and tall, and with a wordless exclamation of triumph, he continued on his path of light and glory.

…That is, until the crippling wave of dizziness hit him like a sledgehammer blow to the face. He collapsed in the mud, his breath as hot as the surface of the sun. His head ached, like a bomb about to burst. But all those unpleasant feelings faded in an instant, as he felt the gentle caress of soft hands running through his hair.

"Rest easy. You have been through much. Far more than any human should be forced to endure."

Link smiled in unfiltered joy, as the warm hands helped him to his feet. As he took in his surroundings, he noticed at once the rain and mud were gone, replaced by soft green grass. The trees in the distance reached up to the sky, and all around him were laughing children at play.

He turned to his rescuer, a Poe with the gentlest eyes he had ever seen. Far gentler than the princess or the ranch girl or the forest elf who had given him his first ocarina. No, he saw pure kindness in these eyes.

"I am Edgar Allan Poe." It spoke, in a voice like honey in the warm summer, or the gentle sound of a soft river. "And I love you more than any being ever could simply because you are perfect. Open your arms and accept my love."

Link did so. And the sounds of the children grew merrier, and the trees grew higher, and the grass grew greener, simply because he had opened himself up to the love of this unjudging Poe. All was well in his existence, and would be forever more.

"And now," Spoke his new love. "We must depart from this incomplete vessel and assume our place as the Angel guardians of the womb of Gaia. Come, Link of the Deku Nuts."

And so, with tears in his eyes, Link bade farewell to the playing children, for they were the spawn of heathen bastards and could not join them. And with the golden wings of a thousand lyre song uplifting them, Link and the Poe rose into the golden clouds above them.

Link smiled.


End file.
